


the light in me will guide you home

by apatternedfever



Category: Doctor Who (2005)
Genre: F/M, aftermath of The Big Bang, minor spoilers for "Night and the Doctor", otp in every universe, spoilers through season five
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-01-05
Updated: 2013-01-05
Packaged: 2017-11-23 17:53:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 912
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/624965
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/apatternedfever/pseuds/apatternedfever
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After their wedding, after everything that's happened, Amy is split in two and Rory is weighted down. But at least they still have each other.</p>
            </blockquote>





	the light in me will guide you home

**Author's Note:**

> Writting for [hurt/comfort bingo](http://hc-bingo.dreamwidth.org/), for the prompt "trapped between realities". Mostly to do with season five's end, but it's inspired by a couple of lines in Night and the Doctor, and in Day of the Moon.

Sometimes Amy thinks she's going to split in two. Everything about her feels fundamentally cracked, split in half down a dividing line that shouldn't ever have happened. Her brain is split; her body should follow suit, should rip apart and fix the problem. Two Amys. One who remembers life before the world collapsed and changed, and one that remembers after it.   
  
One who remembers a childhood where the Doctor really was just a dream and an imaginary friend, where her parents took care of her and there were no psychiatrists, where she grew up a little better, had less abandonment issues -- but she never left Leadworth.  
  
One who remembers being the town freak, psychiatrists and a life with an aunt who never understood her, growing up too fast and never really growing up at the same time, terrified to love anyone, terrified to be left -- but she had the Doctor, she had adventures, she had the time of either life in the TARDIS, in other times, on other worlds.  
  
(One where she never met a boy who didn't treat her like a freak, never had a friend to dress up as the Raggedy Doctor for her, never fell in love, never though maybe she could be the marrying kind, never knew what was missing even when she ran off with her imaginary friend -- but it's dimmer, faint and so, so wrong, and she doesn't let herself dwell on it for long.)  
  
She knows, technically she knows, which is true, which happened in this version of the universe. But this version of the universe isn't the only one, and deep in her bones, she knows that. She knows that, no matter what the people around her remember and don't remember, she lived that other life too, and it feels just as real as the one she'd drop back into if the Doctor took her home.  
  
And sometimes she wants to sit down and cry over it. Sometimes it hurts so badly to think about it that all she can do is wait till the split inevitably comes.  
  
\---  
  
The weight of history is so heavy that Rory doesn't know how he can hold it up. Years and years and years, first heard of and then lived through, all balanced on him. Sitting on his shoulder like Atlas holding up the world, and if he falls it will bury him in the rubble. Sitting on his chest as he lies in the darkness, until he can't breathe under it. He's sick with history, weighted with it, he can't even  _think_  for how heavily it sits on him.  
  
He remembers so many impossible lives, things he couldn't have lived through, that the life he's had -- lives he's had, both of them -- feel like nothing in comparison. He remembers, honestly  _remembers_ , being a Roman soldier, being plastic, being the Lone Centurion, being a myth. (A myth he's sure didn't exist last time around for the universe, and he doesn't even want to wonder how that works.) He remember dying and being swallowed by light, disappearing with his last breath. He remembers it all as clearly as marrying Amy, travelling with the Doctor, growing up in Leadworth, his first day at the hospital -- more clearly, some days. So clearly it feels like it's all he's ever had. So clearly that all he can do some days is sit and remember and wonder if his skin is really skin, if some day he'll wake up and find he's plastic again, dead again, a ghost lost in the TARDIS and in time.  
  
All he never lived through, it's so heavy on him he's sure he's going to collapse under the weight. They'll never find him under the rubble, even his bones turned to dust under so many years.  
  
\---  
  
The darkness and the quiet sounds of the TARDIS flying surrounds them, but neither of them are paying attention to what's there. They're lost in their own head, staring into the darkness, remembering worlds these eyes have never seen, fates they've never had to face.  
  
Tired in the dark, nothing quite feels real anyway, and it makes it easier, somehow, for Rory to admit in a rough voice, "Sometimes I don't know what's really happened to us."  
  
Amy squeezes her eyes shut, her arms wrapped tightly around her husband. She nods into his chest, just enough for him to know that she hears him, that she understands, and he lets out a shuddering breath. It doesn't take the weight away, not entirely, but it helps, just a little, to know that he's not alone.  
  
She moves without warning, surging up against him, pressing her mouth hard to him. Her arms wrap tighter yet, like she's drowing and he's her lifesaver, like he's falling and she's trying to hold him up. Maybe he is, maybe she is, maybe they both are, and maybe it doesn't matter, when she pulls away just enough to speak, and he can feel her breath on his face in the dark.  
  
"This is real," she says fiercely, and kisses him again, so hard he can feel how her teeth are clenched behind her lips. It's not a very good kiss, but maybe that doesn't matter. Maybe it doesn't need to be a good kiss to be a lifejacket, an anchor, a reminder.  
  
He tightens his arms around her and pulls her closer in the darkness. "This is real," he answers quietly, and for now, at least, it's enough.


End file.
